


Heavenly

by NekoAisu



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Space, Feenale Fantashy Ex Vee, Fluff and Humor, Interspecies Romance, M/M, Space Captain Prompto, Star Noctis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 17:49:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18554755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoAisu/pseuds/NekoAisu
Summary: With all the blinding force of a supernova, Prompto’s life was irrevocably altered the second Noctis made himself known.He can’t find it in himself to be anything but joyous.





	Heavenly

**Author's Note:**

> My piece for the Feenale Fantashy Ex Vee zine!  
> It's free to get here: https://twitter.com/ffexveezine/status/1120103677656625152?s=21

Prompto is eight when he’s first taken offworld. His mother laughs when he sits on her lap at the helm of her ship, eyes glued to the wild beauty of the outer galaxy like it’s the most wondrous thing he’s ever seen. Truly, it is. 

He puts his all into training and honing skills for starfaring as he grows up, hands calloused by sixteen from endless hours of work onboard a passenger vessel on the weekends compounded by two part time jobs as a mechanic in differing sides of his home district. There’s grease on his hands and smeared over his bandana that doesn’t ever leave his skin in full no matter how hard he tries, smooth scars from burns sitting with rougher ones where his skin had caught on some component and been sliced open. By the time he’s eighteen, it’s a running joke in the lower east side that he needs some sort of super power to protect his hands with how often he ends up raiding their dingy first aid cabinet for cheap plasters. 

The upper end doesn’t care so long as he kisses the ring and fixes their stupidly expensive android companions without any fuss. The one time he’d bled in his tiny corner of the studio had gotten one of the engineers into a tizzy, her hands smooth and unblemished where they cleaned up the cut and bandaged it with a cosmetic sheet worth more than a whole new set of tools. Monica had checked on him for a few days after as well, comfortable around him in a way that half the managerial staff was not. The other mechanics don’t mind him one bit because they can see and recognize his skill, but the engineers and artisans don’t know and don’t care. They‘d taken one look at his messy blonde hair and rumpled jumpsuit and sniffed in disapproval. 

It’s worth it, though, when the paychecks are enough he can set fifty percent aside every month and still afford to live comfortably in the lower west quarter when his place in the east is gentrified. Aranea gives him shit over not buying one of the renovated suites, but it’s a waste and they both know it.

He signs onto a premier residential vessel as an active duty engineer three months later with two new certifications and a nervous smile. The captain takes one look at him and says, “Well, I guess you’ll do.”

It’s one of the happiest moments of his life.

He visits so many planets, passes stars and nebulae whose intensity and coloration is like nothing he’s ever seen, but it all pales in comparison to the wonder of that first time in space. He works until his arms scream in pain fixing a busted engine the fourth night on the job and gets a raise the day after when it purrs smoother than it did the day it rolled into a shipyard for the first time. “We expect great things from you, Argentum,” the captain  reminds congratulates. 

He continues to travel with  _ The Quay  _ and her crew until he’s twenty four and, even then, he’s answering calls from junior engineers for months after his leave. It takes a good eight months before he’s managed to procure some old (scrap-ready) starship and get the required certs to fly her. He searches for a crew in the lower city where he’d started out─running into old friends and new faces alike─because there’s no shortage of people who would  _ love  _ to get off Homeworld and see something new. 

_ Neptune’s Envy  _ is in no way a new ship. She’s a bit dented and her paint is worn to hell from stern to bow, but Prompto  _ loves  _ her. He lives in her boiler room for days on end, replacing old gauges and tuning up ancient hyperdrives until she stops sputtering at halfway to lightspeed (and that’s because he’s managed to get her to cruise smoother than the headlining recreational models). 

It feels strange to be staring out into the infinite stretch of celestial space before him. After so many years of toiling away below deck and gazing out portholes, the sheer expanse of it is awe inspiring. Crowe reminds him to shut his mouth as if flies would exist in his ship. In space. Halfway out out of Andromeda’s Court.  _ Oh my gods,  _ Prompto thinks faintly,  _ I’m never going to get used to this.  _

There are challenges enough to keep his mind off of the obvious realization that He’s Captain Now─most stemming from the chaos Nyx raises when tinkering with their photon accelerator as if it ever needs be joined with their coffee machine─but none of them prepare him for staring into the heart of a Star. 

There was no warning before the  _ Neptune’s  _ sensors go haywire, heat readings hitting extremes and shielding running warning scans on the viewport Prompto can’t even  _ see  _ because it’s all gone white like staring into a supernova even from behind his eyelids. He’s blinding afterimages from where they’ve nearly seared themselves into his corneas when a voice sings in tones that make his skull rattle, words spoken in a language long lost to Earthborn. When his vision finally clears, it’s to the sight of a Star whose light and shape are so far from stable that he’s left to squint at the shifting form floating barely half a meter from the bow. 

He opens his mouth, ready to order a that they reverse the engines and  _ get the hell away from that thing  _ when the frequency shifts to something he can intrinsically understand. 

The Star stares, light dimming and shifting to something close to static, and pulses a greeting so ancient it feels like coming home. With the starsong reverberating in his nerves instead of his skull, Prompto responds with a tentative, “Hello?”

The star  _ beams,  _ blinding flashes of light jumping from its skin and it floats toward him, dimming further until the Heiligenschein Prompto  _ swore  _ was made from coronae and solar flares turned to something resembling shimmering hair. Its speech shifts, losing the innate melic quality to reverberate in Prompto’s ears same as a human’s would.  _ “Hello?” _

“Uh… hi. Hello. I’m Prompto,” he introduces as if trying for a new (and very awkward) friendship. 

The Star responds in a mixture of speech and electrifying sensation, “Hello. I am…  _ N҉o҉c҉t҉i҉s҉.” _

From that point onward, Prompto found that Noctis was dead-set on accompanying  _ Neptune’s Envy  _ from one side of the universe to the other. Between consuming nebulae and communicating through EM interference, Noctis absorbs the crew’s use of Insomnian Standard as if a sponge. When Prompto asks why a Star would want to learn or even  _ use  _ earthborn language, Noctis shimmers blue-white in laughter. 

_ “Why not?” _

Prompto shrugs, “Makes sense, yeah.” He presses one of the myriad buttons to the left of the main console and commands, “Drautos, play  _ Bohemian Rhapsody.” _

The AI responds with a harsh, “Yes, Captain,” that Noctis imitates in silent bass. The song streams through  _ Neptune’s  _ old speakers, a little crackly and not all too clear, but Noctis nearly glues himself to the shielding as if it’s the best thing he’s ever listened to. 

Crowe comes skidding down the main hall and into the bridge just in time for the chorus, a good third of the crew not too far behind, and Noctis’s form spasms where he wants to move, to drift surrounded by these new sounds, to  _ dance.  _ Prompto drives up the volume and attempts a truly heinous falsetto as Libertus bellows along with the volume only a seasoned sailor has any right to harness. Noctis vibrates as if making himself out to be the cosmic equivalent to an electric guitar the moment he hears the solo and it knocks out half of the starboard floodlights.    
Prompto cheers him on as if tallying up the costs of replacing the ruptured bulbs isn’t going to carve a good chunk out of his profits. 

The end of the song comes all too soon, but Pelna takes over the pseudo-DJ stand to show them “true music” (which turns out to be everyone in a two lightyear radius getting rickrolled when he hijacks the radio). Noctis  _ cackles  _ when Prompto’s face goes on a journey and a half in Pelna’s direction. He’s been  _ betrayed  _ and Noctis is taking enjoyment from his pain. 

Nyx nearly vaults over the controls, shitty Galahdian film camera in hand, and snaps a blurry X-Files-worthy photo of him and the top two thirds of Noctis’s body. He pulls the film from the side and flaps it around in the recycled air in hopes it’ll develop faster. 

Noctis asks,  _ “What was that?” _

“It’s a flash, starboy,” Nyx informs with a wink. “Helps those of us who aren’t naturally luminous to show up in photographs.”

_ “Photographs?” _

Nyx hops back over the console and pulls out the scanning drawer, popping the film in for all of a second before snatching it right back out. Prompto pulls up the scan on the main display and reverses the direction so that it can be seen through the glass on Noctis’s side. The Star doesn’t respond for a long moment before asking,  _ “Can I have one, too?” _

“You’d burn film like this right up, but we can keep the photos for you here and display them whenever you like, kiddo.”

Prompto flusters at how easily Nyx calls the starborn something like “kiddo.” For all intents and purposes, Noctis is easily five times their own ages and  _ then  _ some, apparent lack of earthborn customs aside. “He’s, like, at least a couple centuries old, Nyx.”

“Everyone is a kid at some point, Prom,” Nyx points out, “and not all of us came from the cradle holding a wrench.”

_ “What is a cradle?” _

Nyx frowns. “Where you put a baby, y’know?”

Noctis seems even more confused.  _ “What is a baby?” _

Crowe hoots something unintelligible while Nyx struggles for an answer that doesn’t involve the antiquated “birds & bees” explanation they save for human children. Prompto smiles, the edges strained, and says, “Not something you need to know about right now. Or ever. Ever is good.”

Noctis dims slightly, usual brilliant white-blue taking on a more reddish tinge.  _ “Okay.” _

He’s put out until they near  _ Neptune’s  _ destination, floating sullenly on portside. Prompto isn’t sure why Noctis’s mood took such a turn after not being given easy knowledge, but he also knows that being lonely in the middle of nowhere sucks major behemoth ass. A part of his brain (the one that likes to fiddle with new things until he’s picked out every detail) wants to ask if it’s because Noctis wants to know where he came from, or why he’s alive. Well, alive is still a term that needs redefining after the mildflayer debacle of 1672. Regardless of the whys or hows, Prompto wants to help. 

When they get to port, Noctis dims himself enough that Prompto is afraid he’ll go out with how many sunspots have taken up residence on his skin. He’s slower, sleepier, but no less curious. Armed to the teeth with  _ Neptune’s  _ grimy old fire extinguisher in hand and the onboard EMT droid (loving named B.G33) trundling along beside him, Prompto sets out to get supplies and hurry back before Noctis can accidentally melt half of Altissia’s westward port. The starborn in question is more than happy to float his way through stall after stall, careful to not let his excitement show for fear of giving what Prompto had called “death” to the beings below him as he follows the captain’s mop of shockingly blonde hair. 

“Hey, Owouo,” Prompto calls, jogging down a stairwell toward his usual supplier. 

The tonberry burbles a response that Noctis can feel shiver its way through the air in a way that makes him want to reach out and grab it, crush the vibrations between his palms, and consume them like food. “Owo uwu ow!”

“Yeah, this is Noct,” Prompto introduces. “He’s the Star I wanted you to meet.”

Owowu pulls a package from behind the counter and slides its wicked sharp knife through the edges of the wrapping, popping the lid with a pleased not-quite-nod. “Uwouw.”

Prompto beams and holds out a black lacquered BitCard only to have it shoved back at his chest, a fond bubble of laughter following the motion. “Thanks for making a friend?  _ Really?  _ I have a whole  _ crew  _ of friends, Owouo,” Prompto complains. “I don’t need you to worry about me, really.”

The tonberry nails him with the most unimpressed look possible when considering how small and expressionless the species tends to be.

“Okay,  _ okay,  _ fine,” Prompto whines, accepting the package with a fond smile. “I’ll see you soon?”

Owowu gives that jiggly, pseudo-nod again and waves them both off. Noctis still wants to eat the sound it creates. 

Prompto stops by another fifteen shops until B.G33 is weighed down with bags and boxes like some sort of harried concierge rather than a medical bot. Noctis listens intently every time until the want to consume becomes too much. He slips out and back to  _ Neptune’s Envy  _ as if a ghost, floating far out past it until the mobile spaceport and Prompto’s ship are both distant specks in the distance, before exploding back to light and sound and  _ song,  _ sunspots giving way to unmitigated combustion where his body shifts and snaps back into something fluid, something  _ deadly,  _ and lets him breathe gouts of nitrogen and chew through debris like they’re the Kenny’s Original Potato Puffs that Crowe eats instead in lieu of a balanced diet. 

He loves it, loves to be firey and untameable, but he also loves  _ Neptune’s  _ crew. There’s Crowe who is definitely not a real human with how she speaks in tongues over the comm lines while all others are asleep and Libertus who taught him the words “family,” “friends,” and “love.” There’s Nyx who can’t shut up even if Luche is holding a blade to his neck and Pelna who tells jokes and doesn’t get mad when Noctis rumbles patiently in question at earthborn humor. There’s  _ Prompto. _

Prompto whose nose scrunches when he laughs and how his face is patterned by something called “freckles”. Prompto who can’t quite match a pitch unless it’s in a tune of his own creation.

Prompto who had stared right into Noctis’s eyes and mouthed the word  _ “beautiful”  _ like Noctis was nothing if not a blessing instead of his undoing.  

With a flicker of colors and a pleased hum, Notis decides that he thinks Prompto is beautiful too. If not Prompto says the word is anything to go by, it’s the best thing he can think of to apply to the human captain. Well… save love. Libertus had said the word softly and explained it carefully until Noctis understood. 

He thinks that maybe he loves Prompto, if Stars like him can feel the same way as humans, but there’s a residual bit of hesitance in how he doesn’t quite have the same parts. Libertus has talked about having a “heart” as if there was one place all his love could be contained. Dimming himself slightly, just enough that he can see  _ Neptune’s Envy  _ heading toward him and away from port, he decides that he may just stick around to find out. 

After all, he has at least another century. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> scream with me on any of my socials i beg of you
> 
>  
> 
> OWO TRANSLATIONS BC I HAVE MORALS:
> 
> Owouo - owl, Hawaiian
> 
> Owo uwu ow - this is the one, Chichewa
> 
> Uwouw - your rope, Dutch


End file.
